The Twelve Days of Christmas

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Similarly, Iceland has a Christmas tradition where " Yule Lads" put gifts in the shoes of children for each of the 13 nights of Christmas. [ citation needed] Faroe Islands [ edit ] One of the two "Twelve Days of Christmas" Faroe stamps Another suggestion is that an old English drinking song may have furnished the idea for the first gift. William B. Sandys refers to it as a "convivial glee introduced a few years since, 'A Pie [i.e., a magpie] sat on a Pear Tree,' where one drinks while the others sing." [57] The image of the bird in the pear tree also appears in lines from a children's counting rhyme an old Mother Goose. [45] A pye sate on a pear tree, Heigh O Once so merrily hopp'd she; Heigh O Twice so merrily, etc. Thrice so, etc. French hens [ edit ] The video game StarCraft: Broodwar released a new map named Twelve Days of StarCraft with the song which was adopted a new lyric featured units from the game by Blizzard on 23 December 1999. [116] [ unreliable source?] In 2013, CarbotAnimations created a new web animation, StarCraft's Christmas Special 2013 the Twelve Days of StarCrafts, with the song which was played in the map Twelve Days of Starcraft. [117] The third day of Christmas my true love sent to me three fat hens, two turtle-doves, a partridge, and a pear-tree; New Orleans band Benny Grunch and the Bunch perform a "locals-humor take" on the song, titled "The Twelve Yats of Christmas". [114] [115]

Sears put out a special Christmas coloring book with Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh characters in 1973 featuring a version of the carol focusing on Pooh's attempts to get a pot of honey from a hollow honey tree, with each verse ending in "and a hunny pot inna hollow tree". Perry Como recorded a traditional version of "Twelve Days of Christmas" for RCA Victor in 1953, but varied the lyrics with "11 Lords a Leaping", "10 Ladies Dancing", and "9 Pipers Piping". The orchestrations were done by Mitchell Ayres.

Peter and Iona Opie suggest that "if '[t]he partridge in the peartree' is to be taken literally it looks as if the chant comes from France, since the Red Leg partridge, which perches in trees more frequently than the common partridge, was not successfully introduced into England until about 1770". [46] This piece is found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years. On one of these sheets, nearly a century old, it is entitled "An Old English Carol," but it can scarcely be said to fall within that description of composition, being rather fitted for use in playing the game of "Forfeits," to which purpose it was commonly applied in the metropolis upwards of forty years since. The practice was for one person in the company to recite the first three lines; a second, the four following; and so on; the person who failed in repeating her portion correctly being subjected to some trifling forfeit. Members of the Navy Sea Chanters sing their comedy version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on 4 December 2009, at the Wallace Theater, Ft. Belvoir, Virginia The second to fourth verses' melody is different from that of the fifth to twelfth verses. Before the fifth verse (when "Five gold rings" is first sung), the melody, using solfege, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth to second items, and this same melody is thereafter sung for the twelfth to sixth items. However, the melody for "four colly birds, three French hens, two turtle doves" changes from this point, differing from the way these lines were sung in the opening four verses. While the words as published in Mirth without Mischief and the Angus broadsheet were almost identical, subsequent versions (beginning with James Orchard Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England of 1842) have displayed considerable variation: [6]

Scott (1892), reminiscing about Christmas and New Year's celebrations in Newcastle around the year 1844, described a performance thus: [25] Halliwell, writing in 1842, stated that "[e]ach child in succession repeats the gifts of the day, and forfeits for each mistake." [6] According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, "Suggestions have been made that the gifts have significance, as representing the food or sport for each month of the year. Importance [certainly has] long been attached to the Twelve Days, when, for instance, the weather on each day was carefully observed to see what it would be in the corresponding month of the coming year. Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate origin of the chant, it seems probable [that] the lines that survive today both in England and France are merely an irreligious travesty." [46] There is evidence pointing to the North of England, specifically the area around Newcastle upon Tyne, as the origin of the carol. Husk, in the 1864 excerpt quoted below, stated that the carol was "found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years", i.e. from approximately 1714. In addition, many of the nineteenth century citations come from the Newcastle area. [14] [21] [23] [25]

Salmon, writing from Newcastle, claimed in 1855 that the song "[had] been, up to within twenty years, extremely popular as a schoolboy's Christmas chant". [14] Five gold rings" has often become "five golden rings", especially in North America. [7] In the standard melody, this change enables singers to fit one syllable per musical note. [10]

An anonymous "antiquarian", writing in 1867, speculated that " pear-tree" is a corruption of French perdrix ( [pɛʁ.dʁi], " partridge"). [18] This was also suggested by Anne Gilchrist, who observed in 1916 that "from the constancy in English, French, and Languedoc versions of the 'merry little partridge,' I suspect that 'pear-tree' is really perdrix (Old French pertriz) carried into England". [55] The variant text "part of a juniper tree", found as early as c. 1840, is likely not original, since "partridge" is found in the French versions. [11] [48] It is probably a corruption of "partridge in a pear tree", though Gilchrist suggests "juniper tree" could have been joli perdrix, [pretty partridge]. [56] [55] a) differences in wording, ignoring capitalisation and punctuation, are indicated in italics (including permutations, where for example the 10th day of Austin's version becomes the 9th day here); Jasper Carrott performed "Twelve Drinks of Christmas" where he appears to be more inebriated with each successive verse. [90] This was based on Scottish comedian Bill Barclay's version. [91] Some variants have " juniper tree" or " June apple tree" rather than "pear tree", presumably a mishearing of "partri dge in a pear tree".

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The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol. A classic example of a cumulative song, the lyrics detail a series of increasingly numerous gifts given to the speaker by their "true love" on each of the twelve days of Christmas (the twelve days that make up the Christmas season, starting with Christmas Day). [1] [2] The carol, whose words were first published in England in the late eighteenth century, has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68. A large number of different melodies have been associated with the song, of which the best known is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin. Austin's arrangement was published by Novello & Co. in 1909. [69] [70] [71] [72] According to a footnote added to the posthumous 1955 reprint of his musical setting, Austin wrote: [73] The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting with Christmas Day to the day before Epiphany (5 January). Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of January 5th, the day before Epiphany, which traditionally marks the end of Christmas celebrations". [43] Illustration of "Twelve Lords a Leaping", from Mirth Without Mischief In the 12 Disasters of Christmas movie, the song has actually been created by the Mayas to ensure that a prophecy of the end of the world be foretold among europeans even after the destruction of the Mayas' civilization.

Irish actor Frank Kelly recorded "Christmas Countdown" in 1982 in which a man named Gobnait O'Lúnasa receives the 12 Christmas gifts referenced in the song from a lady named Nuala. As each gift is received, Gobnait gets increasingly upset with the person who sent them, as said gifts wreak havoc in the house where he lives with his mother. This version charted in both Ireland (where it reached number 8 in 1982) and the UK (entering the UK chart in December 1983 and reaching number 26). [110] [111] The song peaked at number 15 in Australia in 1984. [112] The Ray Conniff Singers recorded a traditional version in 1962, appearing on the album We Wish You a Merry Christmas. VeggieTales parodied "The Twelve Days of Christmas" under the title "The 8 Polish Foods of Christmas" in the 1996 album A Very Veggie Christmas. It was later rerecorded as a Silly Song for the episode The Little Drummer Boy in 2011. [106] A lady begins it, generally an elderly lady, singing the first line in a high clear voice, the person sitting next takes up the second, the third follows, at first gently, but before twelfth day is reached the whole circle were joining in with stentorian noise and wonderful enjoyment.

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In the earliest versions, the word on is not present at the beginning of each verse—for example, the first verse begins simply "The first day of Christmas". On was added in Austin's 1909 version, and became very popular thereafter. The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas. The second day of Christmas my true love sent to me two turtle-doves, a partridge, and a pear-tree; The exact origins and the meaning of the song are unknown, but it is highly probable that it originated from a children's memory and forfeit game. [42] In the final verse, Austin inserted a flourish on the words "Five gold rings". This has not been copied by later versions, which simply repeat the melody from the earlier verses. Earlier melodies [ edit ]